Hanweir Lancer
Soulbond turned the keyword-granting body into a two-card package, and this one distributes first strike: pair it on entry and both creatures swing first in combat, the bond holding until you lose one half of it. The trick is what first strike does to a wider attacking team. A 2/2 granting first strike to whatever it tags is unremarkable on its own, but the keyword scales with the bonded creature's size and the board state around it. Hand it to a fattie and the defender now has to block into a creature that hits first and kills before the swing-back; hand it to another middling body and you have built a small attrition wall that wins races it had no business winning. The pairing mechanic is the price: the bond is fragile (lose either creature and both lose the bonus), and you only get to assign it as the creatures enter, so the value is front-loaded and committed rather than reactive. That makes it a tempo piece that wants to land into an existing board, not a sit-and-wait answer. Soulbond as a whole was an experiment in turning combat keywords into a relationship between two creatures rather than a static buff, and first strike is the cleanest version of that idea: a combat advantage that asks only that both halves stay on the table together.


